System and Method for Focused Routing of Content to Dynamically Determined Groups of Reviewers

ABSTRACT

A mechanism for routing content, e.g., an electronic document, an invention disclosure, etc., to a person or group of persons, e.g., a reviewer/review team, for review and evaluation of the electronic document. This mechanism involves receiving the content and analyzing the content to generate identifiers of subject matter of the content. Subject matter categories are then determined to be associated with the content based on the analysis. The mechanism then retrieves profiles for people that are authorized to review and evaluate content. These profiles include identifiers of categories of knowledge that indicate areas of knowledge held by an associated person. A person is then selected based on the subject matter categories and categories of knowledge. The content may then be routed to a client computing device associated with the selected person or group or persons.

This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 10/933,632,filed Sep. 2, 2004, status allowed.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Technical Field

The present invention is generally directed to an improved dataprocessing system. More specifically, the present invention is directedto an improved data processing system and method for routing content todynamically determined groups of reviewers. In a preferred embodiment,the present invention is directed to a system and method for matchingand subsequent routing of content and/or electronic forms requiringreview and approval to dynamically formed groups of people with a set ofattributes (skills, location, organization affiliation, expertise) thatrelates to the content/electronic forms.

2. Description of Related Art

Enterprises that engage in intellectual property activities often employinvention disclosure review teams as a filtering step in the process ofensuring the validity of the invention before money and time are spentto search, prepare and file a patent application with the United StatesPatent and Trademark Office. These review teams are typically composedof inventors from different technology and business areas. For example,a review team may be comprised of individuals whose backgrounds are inthe systems architecture, microchip engineering, user interface design,etc. technology areas. While some review teams are focused on aparticular technological area, others have broader expertise in anattempt to cover inventions from unexpected quarters.

Review teams are currently formed around physical and/or organizationalconstructs, such as a research laboratory and/or line of business, e.g.,software, services, etc. These same constructs come into play when a newinvention disclosure is routed for evaluation. That is, inventiondisclosures are often routed to review teams based on physical and/ororganizational constructs rather than the expertise of the particularreview team.

Routing approaches that rely on physical location or organizationalaffiliations have drawbacks. Many inventors develop ideas that can comefrom any technological and business area that are not necessarilyaligned to the mission of the inventor's organization. For example, anInternational Business Machines (IBM) Global Services employee maysubmit a disclosure related to an advance in microchip technology. Ifthe routing is performed based on organizational constructs, thatinvention disclosure would end up in an IBM Global Services review teamwhich may lack the necessary expertise for a thorough evaluation.Expertise mismatches may result in the positive evaluation of an invalidinvention disclosure due to lack of knowledge about the state of the artand/or the invention's true business value, the negative evaluation of avalid disclosure due to lack of understanding and/or appreciation of thenovelty, or the missed opportunity of further exploitation of aninvention (beyond a patent application filing) due to its lack ofvisibility.

An additional problem occurs when similar invention disclosures aresubmitted by different inventors and are routed to different reviewteams because of the use of physical location or organizationalaffiliations. Such instances tend to occur when a newtechnology/paradigm is introduced, e.g., instant messaging, gridcomputing, etc. Because inventions that are “in progress” internally donot come up in prior art searches, this sometimes results in duplicatesof the same idea being processed simultaneously in the same company atnon-trivial cost. In large global enterprises, with broad scope ofbusinesses and technologies, this condition may not be uncommon.

All of these problems translate into a needless expense for the company.Therefore, it would be beneficial to have a system and method forrouting invention disclosures to review teams based on the expertise ofthe review team members.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a system and method for routing content,e.g., invention disclosures, to dynamically identified reviewers/reviewteams based on an expertise matching mechanism that favorsreviewers/review teams that are experienced in the general knowledgearea, e.g., technology or business knowledge area, covered by thecontent, e.g., invention disclosure. The preferred embodiments of thepresent invention are directed to use of the present invention with thesubmission and review of invention disclosures, although the presentinvention is not limited to such content. With a preferred embodiment ofthe present invention, an invention disclosure is categorized using anestablished categorization taxonomy when it is created. In addition,each review team and/or reviewer registers himself/herself with thesystem as having expertise in certain categories of technology/businessfrom the categorization taxonomy. This expertise categorization of thereview teams and/or reviewers may be updated as the review team orreviewers expertise changes over time.

The categorization of the invention disclosure may be performed manuallyby the creator of the invention disclosure or may be performed using anautocategorizing mechanism. The autocategorizing mechanism may make useof, for example, keyword searches or other word and/or pattern matchingmechanisms against existing invention disclosures. Based on thecategorization of existing invention disclosures and the degree ofmatching of the current invention disclosure to the existing inventiondisclosures, an automated categorization may be performed such that thecurrent invention disclosure is categorized into similartechnology/business areas as those existing invention disclosures itmost closely matches. Alternatively, the categories identified throughthis automated categorization may be presented to the creator of theinvention disclosure, or other user, such that they may choose thecategories to be applied to the invention disclosure.

Having categorized the invention disclosure, these categories are usedto identify reviewers/review teams that have the necessary knowledge toprovide a fair and accurate evaluation of the invention disclosure.Reviewer profiles are retrieved that indicate the areas of expertise ofthe various reviewers. For example, similar categories to those used tocategorize the invention disclosure may be used to indicate thetechnology/business areas of expertise of the reviewers. This similarityin categories makes it possible to match reviewers having the samecategories of expertise with invention disclosures that are categorizedinto the categories of expertise of the reviewer. In this way, reviewersmay be matched up with invention disclosures.

The categories of an invention disclosure, whether determined manuallyor automatically, may be ranked according to the most relevant categoryand less relevant categories. In this way, a more accurate routing ofthe invention disclosure to a dynamically assembled review team havingappropriate expertise may be obtained.

In the event that more than one review team and/or reviewer has theexpertise necessary to perform a fair evaluation of the inventiondisclosure, the mechanism of the present invention favors the reviewteam and/or reviewer based on a relevance of the review team or reviewerto the inventors identified in the invention disclosure in terms oforganization and/or physical location. Moreover, the initial matching ofthe invention disclosure to a reviewer/review team may always take intoconsideration one or more of knowledge or skills matching, physicalproximity, organization affiliation, expertise domain, personalexperience, and the like, of the reviewers/review teams when selecting areviewer/review team to which the invention disclosure is to be routed.The parameters of the reviewer/review team that are utilized to performmatching of reviewers/review teams to invention disclosures andselection of a reviewer/review team from those that match the inventiondisclosure may be set forth in routing policies and rules establishedwithin the system of the present invention.

Regardless of the particular routing of the invention disclosure to areview team/reviewer using the present invention, the inventors'organization is provided with credit for submission of the inventiondisclosure and the reviewing team/reviewer is provided with credit forperforming the evaluation of the invention disclosure with regard tointernal company accounting and incentive programs.

Thus, the present invention provides a method, system and computerprogram product for routing content, such as an electronic document, aninvention disclosure, an electronic form, or the like, to a person,e.g., a reviewer, for review and evaluation of the content. This method,system and computer program product involves receiving the content andanalyzing the content to generate identifiers of subject matter of thecontent. One or more subject matter categories are then determined to beassociated with the content based on the analysis and generation ofidentifiers.

The method, system and computer program product then retrieves profilesfor one or more people that are authorized to review and evaluatecontent. These profiles include identifiers of categories of knowledgeof the one or more people such that the categories of knowledge indicateareas of knowledge held by the associated person, e.g., areas ofexpertise of the individual person. The present invention then selects aperson, from the one or more people, to review and evaluate the contentbased on the one or more subject matter categories and categories ofknowledge of the one or more people. The content may then be routed to aclient computing device associated with the selected person, e.g., anotification may be sent with a link to the content.

The present invention permits the formation and co-existence of twodistinct types of review teams or groups of reviewers: (1) those thatare broad in scope, where team members come from different disciplines;and (2) those that are focused in a specific knowledge area, e.g.,business/technology knowledge area. The present invention increases thevisibility of ideas within the content beyond the content creator'simmediate physical location and/or organizational area as the content isexposed to expert individuals who know how best to leverage the ideaswithin the content in other areas, e.g., business or technology areas.

With regard to invention disclosures, the present invention reduces theincidence of independently submitted invention disclosures that arealike but not yet in a searchable state as these would typically berouted to the same review team which is in a better position torecognize similarities. The present invention improves the overallquality of invention disclosure submissions through informed, insightfulevaluations from review teams that have expertise in the particulartechnology areas. In addition, the present invention may be used to viewthe expertise of review teams/reviews with regard to the taxonomy ofinvention categories so that it can be determined where coverage gaps orexcesses are present. This may trigger the formation of a new reviewteam or re-balancing of existing review teams.

These and other features and advantages of the present invention will bedescribed in, or will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in theart in view of, the following detailed description of the preferredembodiments.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The novel features believed characteristic of the invention are setforth in the appended claims. The invention itself, however, as well asa preferred mode of use, further objectives and advantages thereof, willbest be understood by reference to the following detailed description ofan illustrative embodiment when read in conjunction with theaccompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is an exemplary diagram of a distributed data processingenvironment in which aspects of the present invention may beimplemented;

FIG. 2 is an exemplary block diagram of a server computing device inwhich aspects of the present invention may be implemented;

FIG. 3 is an exemplary block diagram of a client computing device inwhich aspects of the present invention may be implemented;

FIG. 4 is an exemplary diagram of the primary operational elements of aninvention disclosure submission and routing system in accordance withone embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 5 is an exemplary diagram of a technological/business categorytaxonomy that may be used to categorize invention disclosures andreviewer expertise in accordance with one exemplary embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 6 is an exemplary diagram illustrating a manner by which aninvention disclosure routing mechanism may be determine a review team orset of reviewers to which an invention disclosure should be routed inaccordance with one exemplary embodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 7 is an exemplary diagram of a display for determining technologyarea expertise coverage by reviewers in accordance with on exemplaryembodiment of the present invention;

FIG. 8 is an exemplary diagram of the primary operational elements of aninvention disclosure and routing mechanism in accordance with analternative embodiment of the present invention in which measurementmechanisms are provided for measuring the effectiveness of the inventiondisclosure categorization mechanism and the invention disclosure routingmechanism;

FIG. 9 is an exemplary flowchart outlining an exemplary operation of thepresent invention when generating an invention disclosure in accordancewith one exemplary embodiment of the present invention; and

FIG. 10 is an exemplary flowchart outlining an exemplary operation ofthe present invention when routing a categorized invention disclosure toa set of reviewers or review team.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

The present invention provides a system and method for categorizingcontent, e.g., electronic documents, invention disclosures, electronicforms, etc., by knowledge area and then routing the content to reviewersand/or review teams that have the optimal expertise for reviewing andapproving/disapproving the content. Therefore, the present invention isespecially well suited for implementation in a distributed dataprocessing environment in which one or more networks are used as acommunication medium between computing devices. Thus, the followingFIGS. 1-3 are provided as an exemplary description of such an exemplarydata processing environment and the server/client computing devices thatmay be used within such an exemplary embodiment. FIGS. 1-3 are onlyexemplary and are not intended to state or imply any limitation as tothe data processing environment or computing devices that may be usedwith the present invention.

With reference now to the figures, FIG. 1 depicts a pictorialrepresentation of a network of data processing systems in which thepresent invention may be implemented. Network data processing system 100is a network of computers in which the present invention may beimplemented. Network data processing system 100 contains a network 102,which is the medium used to provide communications links between variousdevices and computers connected together within network data processingsystem 100. Network 102 may include connections, such as wire, wirelesscommunication links, or fiber optic cables.

In the depicted example, server 104 is connected to network 102 alongwith storage unit 106. In addition, clients 108, 110, and 112 areconnected to network 102. These clients 108, 110, and 112 may be, forexample, personal computers or network computers. In the depictedexample, server 104 provides data, such as boot files, operating systemimages, and applications to clients 108-112. Clients 108, 110, and 112are clients to server 104. Network data processing system 100 mayinclude additional servers, clients, and other devices not shown. In thedepicted example, network data processing system 100 is the Internetwith network 102 representing a worldwide collection of networks andgateways that use the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) suite of protocols to communicate with one another. At theheart of the Internet is a backbone of high-speed data communicationlines between major nodes or host computers, consisting of thousands ofcommercial, government, educational and other computer systems thatroute data and messages. Of course, network data processing system 100also may be implemented as a number of different types of networks, suchas for example, an intranet, a local area network (LAN), or a wide areanetwork (WAN). FIG. 1 is intended as an example, and not as anarchitectural limitation for the present invention.

With the present invention, server 104 may be provided with mechanismsfor performing invention disclosure categorization and routing inaccordance with aspects of the present invention as discussed hereafter.Network storage unit 106 may be used to store information necessary toperform this invention disclosure categorization and routing. Clientdevices 108, 110 and 112 may be used to submit invention disclosuresand/or receive invention disclosures for review by a user. Thus, clientdevices 108, 110 and 112 may be associated with inventors and/orreviewers or both. As discussed hereafter, these computing devices inthe distributed data processing environment are used to submit inventiondisclosures, categorize the invention disclosures, select appropriatereviewers and/or review teams to review the invention disclosures basedon established reviewer/review team expertise categories, and then routethe invention disclosures to the selected reviewers/review team.

Referring to FIG. 2, a block diagram of a data processing system thatmay be implemented as a server, such as server 104 in FIG. 1, isdepicted in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the presentinvention. Data processing system 200 may be a symmetric multiprocessor(SMP) system including a plurality of processors 202 and 204 connectedto system bus 206. Alternatively, a single processor system may beemployed. Also connected to system bus 206 is memory controller/cache208, which provides an interface to local memory 209. I/O bus bridge 210is connected to system bus 206 and provides an interface to I/O bus 212.Memory controller/cache 208 and I/O bus bridge 210 may be integrated asdepicted.

Peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus bridge 214 connected to I/Obus 212 provides an interface to PCI local bus 216. A number of modemsmay be connected to PCI local bus 216. Typical PCI bus implementationswill support four PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors.Communications links to clients 108-112 in FIG. 1 may be providedthrough modem 218 and network adapter 220 connected to PCI local bus 216through add-in connectors.

Additional PCI bus bridges 222 and 224 provide interfaces for additionalPCI local buses 226 and 228, from which additional modems or networkadapters may be supported. In this manner, data processing system 200allows connections to multiple network computers. A memory-mappedgraphics adapter 230 and hard disk 232 may also be connected to I/O bus212 as depicted, either directly or indirectly.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardwaredepicted in FIG. 2 may vary. For example, other peripheral devices, suchas optical disk drives and the like, also may be used in addition to orin place of the hardware depicted. The depicted example is not meant toimply architectural limitations with respect to the present invention.

The data processing system depicted in FIG. 2 may be, for example, anIBM eServer pSeries system, a product of International Business MachinesCorporation in Armonk, N.Y., running the Advanced Interactive Executive(AIX) operating system or LINUX operating system.

With reference now to FIG. 3, a block diagram illustrating a dataprocessing system is depicted in which the present invention may beimplemented. Data processing system 300 is an example of a clientcomputer. Data processing system 300 employs a peripheral componentinterconnect (PCI) local bus architecture. Although the depicted exampleemploys a PCI bus, other bus architectures such as Accelerated GraphicsPort (AGP) and Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) may be used.Processor 302 and main memory 304 are connected to PCI local bus 306through PCI bridge 308. PCI bridge 308 also may include an integratedmemory controller and cache memory for processor 302. Additionalconnections to PCI local bus 306 may be made through direct componentinterconnection or through add-in boards. In the depicted example, localarea network (LAN) adapter 310, SCSI host bus adapter 312, and expansionbus interface 314 are connected to PCI local bus 306 by direct componentconnection. In contrast, audio adapter 316, graphics adapter 318, andaudio/video adapter 319 are connected to PCI local bus 306 by add-inboards inserted into expansion slots. Expansion bus interface 314provides a connection for a keyboard and mouse adapter 320, modem 322,and additional memory 324. Small computer system interface (SCSI) hostbus adapter 312 provides a connection for hard disk drive 326, tapedrive 328, and CD-ROM drive 330. Typical PCI local bus implementationswill support three or four PCI expansion slots or add-in connectors.

An operating system runs on processor 302 and is used to coordinate andprovide control of various components within data processing system 300in FIG. 3. The operating system may be a commercially availableoperating system, such as Windows XP, which is available from MicrosoftCorporation. An object oriented programming system such as Java may runin conjunction with the operating system and provide calls to theoperating system from Java programs or applications executing on dataprocessing system 300. “Java” is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programmingsystem, and applications or programs are located on storage devices,such as hard disk drive 326, and may be loaded into main memory 304 forexecution by processor 302.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardware inFIG. 3 may vary depending on the implementation. Other internal hardwareor peripheral devices, such as flash read-only memory (ROM), equivalentnonvolatile memory, or optical disk drives and the like, may be used inaddition to or in place of the hardware depicted in FIG. 3. Also, theprocesses of the present invention may be applied to a multiprocessordata processing system.

As another example, data processing system 300 may be a stand-alonesystem configured to be bootable without relying on some type of networkcommunication interfaces As a further example, data processing system300 may be a personal digital assistant (PDA) device, which isconfigured with ROM and/or flash ROM in order to provide non-volatilememory for storing operating system files and/or user-generated data.

The depicted example in FIG. 3 and above-described examples are notmeant to imply architectural limitations. For example, data processingsystem 300 also may be a notebook computer or hand held computer inaddition to taking the form of a PDA. Data processing system 300 alsomay be a kiosk or a Web appliance.

As mentioned above, the present invention provides a system and methodfor routing content, such as electronic documents, inventiondisclosures, and the like, to persons, such as reviewers or reviewteams, based on an expertise matching mechanism that favorsreviewers/review teams that are experienced in the general knowledgearea, e.g., technology and/or business area, covered by the subjectmatter of the content. It should be appreciated that while the preferredembodiments of the present invention will be described in terms ofreviewing invention disclosures, the present invention is not limited tosuch. Rather, any article or portion of content that must be reviewedand evaluated by individuals with specialized knowledge may be thesubject of the present invention. That is, any article or portion ofcontent that can be categorized into a particular area of specialknowledge and which is to be reviewed and evaluated by individualshaving this special knowledge, is intended to be within the spirit andscope of the present invention. For example, the content may includescientific/medical articles for a journal, insurance forms wherein avirtual team is to be selected to review the insurance forms,legislative content that is to be reviewed by legislative or judicialreview panels, or any other type of content that is to be reviewed byone or more individuals having special knowledge pertaining to thecontent in order to approve/disapprove of the content for some purpose.

With a preferred embodiment of the system and method of the presentinvention in which the content is an invention disclosure that is to bereviewed by a reviewer/review team, an invention disclosure iscategorized using an established categorization taxonomy when it iscreated. In addition, each review team and/or reviewer registershimself/herself with the system as having expertise in certaincategories of technology/business from the categorization taxonomy.These categorizations are then used to match invention disclosures toreviewers and/or review teams so that the invention disclosures arereviewed by individuals that are most likely to understand thetechnology, its level of inventiveness with regard to the current stateof the technological art, and the potential for business exploitation ofthe invention.

FIG. 4 is an exemplary diagram of the primary operational elements of aninvention disclosure submission and routing system in accordance withone embodiment of the present invention. It should be appreciated thatthe various data processing systems illustrated in FIG. 4 may beimplemented in a distributed data processing environment, such as thedistributed data processing environment illustrated in FIG. 1, on aplurality of computing devices. It should also be appreciated that manyof the elements shown in FIG. 4 may be combined together in a singlecomputing device. Thus, for example, the invention disclosure system andcentralized reviewer database, as discussed hereafter, may be integratedinto a single computing device or system or may be distributed across aplurality of computing devices and systems. FIG. 4 is only meant to beexemplary of one possible organization of the operational elements ofthe present invention and is not intended to state or imply anylimitations as to the manner by which the present invention may beimplemented.

As shown in FIG. 4, the invention disclosure submission and routingsystem of the exemplary embodiment includes an invention disclosuresystem 400 through which an inventor may submit an invention disclosureand have the invention disclosure categorized for routing to anappropriate reviewer, set of reviewers, or review team. The inventorinterfaces with an invention disclosure authoring tool 430 whichprovides one or more graphical user interfaces through which theinventor may submit information about the inventor and the inventor'sinvention. The inventor information may include, for example, theinventor's name, organization, department, manager information, contactinformation, and the like. Such information may be gathered for eachinventor on an invention disclosure. The invention information mayinclude a conception date, workable date, description of the problemsolved, description of the invention, information regarding publicationor sale of the invention, information regarding joint ventures todevelop the invention, information regarding any product in which theinvention is a part, and the like. Invention disclosure authoring toolsare generally known in the art. The result of such an inventiondisclosure authoring tool is an electronic document that represents theinvention disclosure and contains the invention disclosure datanecessary for evaluation of the invention for patenting purposes.

The invention disclosure is received in the invention disclosure system400 and is analyzed by the invention disclosure categorizer 420. Theinvention disclosure categorizer 420 parses the invention disclosure andextracts metadata of the invention disclosure. This meta data is asimplified version of the invention disclosure in which elements of theinvention disclosure that are pertinent to categorization are stored.That is, keywords from the invention description and/or problemdescription, titles, inventor organization parameter values, otherparameter values, and the like, that may be used to determineappropriate categories for the invention disclosure, are extracted bythe invention disclosure categorizer 420 and stored as part of ametadata file in the invention disclosure metadata database 410.

As previously mentioned above, the categorization of the inventiondisclosure may be performed manually by the creator of the inventiondisclosure, e.g., the inventor, or may be performed using anautocategorizing mechanism. With a manual process, the inventor may bepresented with the technology/business categories taxonomy 405 via theinvention disclosure authoring tool 430. The creator of the inventiondisclosure may then select from the taxonomy those categories oftechnology/business that most accurately reflect the technology/businessareas covered by the invention disclosure. This information may then bestored as part of the invention disclosure metadata in the inventiondisclosure metadata database 410 for later use.

Alternatively, the invention disclosure may be provided to the inventiondisclosure categorizer 420 for automated or semi-automatedclassification of the invention disclosure. With an automated orsemi-automated classification of the invention disclosure, the inventiondisclosure categorizer 420 obtains information from both thetechnology/business categories taxonomy database 405 and the existinginvention disclosure database 415 to determine appropriate categories oftechnology/business in which to classify the invention disclosure. Theinvention disclosure metadata in the invention disclosure metadatadatabase 410 is used to match the technology/business coverage of theinvention disclosure against categories in the technology/businesscategory taxonomy 405. For example, keywords or patterns of keywordsextracted from the invention disclosure may be matched against keywordsof categories in the technology/business categories taxonomy 405. Theresult is a list of potential categories for the invention disclosure.

This initial list of potential categories may be further refined usingthe information obtained from the existing invention disclosure database415. The information obtained from the existing invention disclosuredatabase 415 may include the invention disclosure itself, the inventiondisclosure metadata, the categories associated with the existinginvention disclosures, the reviewers/review teams to which the inventiondisclosure was routed, and the like. The autocategorizing mechanism ofthe invention disclosure categorizer 420 may make use of, for example,keyword searches or other word and/or pattern matching mechanisms usingthe invention disclosure metadata for the invention disclosure stored inthe invention disclosure metadata database 410 and match the metadatawith existing invention disclosure information obtained from existinginvention disclosure database 415.

Based on the categorization of existing invention disclosures and thedegree of matching of the current invention disclosure metadata to theexisting invention disclosures, the initial list of categories may besearched to identify those categories in the initial list of categoriesthat match categories in which existing invention disclosures that aremost like the current invention disclosure are categorized. That is, themost relevant categories from the initial list of categories areidentified by determining the most closely related existing inventiondisclosures, identifying the categories associated with these mostclosely related existing invention disclosures, and matching thesecategories to categories in the initial list of categories. The matchingcategories in the initial list of categories are then returned as thesuggested categories for the invention disclosure.

The categories of an invention disclosure, whether determined manuallyor automatically, may be ranked according to the most relevant categoryand less relevant categories. This ranking may be performed based on howmany existing invention disclosures that most closely match the currentinvention disclosure are classified in the category, a degree to whichthe invention disclosure metadata of the current invention disclosurematches the category, and the like. Thus, a ranking of categories oftechnology/business from the technology/business category taxonomy 405may be generated for the invention disclosure.

These categories may then be associated with the invention disclosure ormay be provided to the creator of the invention disclosure via theinvention disclosure authoring tool 430. If presented to the creator ofthe invention disclosure, the categories may be presented via agraphical user interface that permits the creator of the inventiondisclosure to select, from the ranked listing of most relevantcategories, those categories that the creator wishes to classify theinvention disclosure in. Thereafter, the selected categories may beassociated with the invention disclosure and stored in the existinginvention disclosure database 415. The category information and othernecessary information for identifying the invention disclosure may thenbe provided to the invention disclosure routing engine 435.

The methodology employed by the invention disclosure categorizer 420 inextracting information from the invention disclosure to generateinvention disclosure metadata, selecting categories from thetechnology/business categories taxonomy 405, and matching of theinvention disclosure to existing invention disclosures, and ranking ofthe categories selected for an invention disclosure are all performed inaccordance with the policies and rules stored in the categorizationpolicies and rules database 425. This database 425 stores the necessaryrules and policies that govern the operation of the invention disclosurecategorizer 420 and are consulted by the invention disclosurecategorizer 420 when making decisions on how to process the data fromthe various sources 405, 410 and 415.

The invention disclosure routing engine 435 receives inventiondisclosure information including the selected categories for theinvention disclosure from the invention disclosure system 400. Theinvention disclosure routing engine 435, operating under the policiesand rules stored in the routing policies and rules database 440, usesthe categorization of the invention disclosure to select a reviewteam/reviewers that are to receive the invention disclosure. Theselection of a review team/reviewers involves retrieving informationabout the review team/reviewers from a centralized reviewer database450. This reviewer database 450 may include information about reviewteams and/or individual reviewers for use in matching the reviewteams/reviewers with invention disclosures that have technology andbusiness subject matter coverage that overlaps the reviewteam/reviewers' areas of expertise. The reviewer database 450 storesinformation regarding the work experience, title, job role, physicallocation, organizational location, and the like, for each review teamand/or reviewer. If the reviewer database 450 operates from a reviewteam level, then the data stored for each review team may be anaggregate of information obtained about each individual reviewerassociated with that review team.

In addition, the reviewer database 450 may store expertise profiles 455for each review team/reviewer. These expertise profiles 455 may identifythe categories of technology/business that the reviewer is considered tohave sufficient knowledge in so that the reviewer is eligible to reviewinvention disclosures in these categories of technology/business. Forexample, the reviewer, a manager of the reviewer, or some otherindividual within the business organization may evaluate the reviewerand select categories from the technology/business category taxonomy 405that the reviewer is believed to be knowledgeable in. This list ofcategories may be maintained in a profile data structure within thereviewer database 450 in association with the reviewer and/or a reviewteam that the reviewer is a member of.

Moreover, the centralized reviewer database 450 may include a review andinvention disclosure history database 460 that stores informationregarding the invention disclosures reviewed by, or submitted by, areviewer. For example, an identification of invention disclosuresreviewed by and submitted by the reviewer, along with thetechnology/business categories associated with these inventiondisclosures, may be maintained for each reviewer/review team. Thesecategories may then be used to augment the expertise profiles 455 byadding categories to the expertise profiles 455 when a sufficient numberof invention disclosures are reviewed and/or submitted by the reviewer.In this way, the reviewer's expertise profile may be dynamically updatedas the reviewer submits new invention disclosures or reviews inventiondisclosures in various technology/business categories.

In addition, the expertise profiles 455 may store a level of expertisefor each technology/business category associated with the reviewer. Thislevel of expertise may further be updated dynamically as the reviewersubmits invention disclosures and/or reviews invention disclosures inthat particular category of technology/business. Thus, for example, ifthe reviewer submits 10 invention disclosures in a particular categoryof technology and reviews 20 invention disclosures in the same categoryof technology, the reviewer's expertise in that particular category oftechnology may be increased to a next level within the expertise profilefor that reviewer.

The reviewer database 450 is preferably updated based on employeeinformation maintained in a candidate directory 485. That is, reviewersare selected from the employee pool of the business organization whenthe employee achieves a position within the organization and a level ofexpertise in a particular technology/business area that makes itdesirable to add that employee as a reviewer of invention disclosures.The requirements for selection of individuals from the candidatedirectory 485 for inclusion in the reviewer database 450 isimplementation specific and is governed by the eligibility rules 490established by the particular business organization. The eligibilitydetermination engine 480 applies these eligibility rules to the entriesin the candidate directory 485 periodically, or upon request, to selectadditional reviewers to be added to the reviewer database 450. Thus, theentries in the candidate directory 485 include similar information asthat described for the reviewer database 450 with the reviewer database450 being a specialized set of entries from the candidate directory 485,i.e. those entries in the candidate directory 485 that have beenselected to be reviewers of invention disclosures.

The categories selected to be associated with the invention disclosureusing the invention disclosure system 400 are used by the inventiondisclosure routing engine 435, under application of the policies andrules 440, to select a review team or predetermined number of reviewersfrom the centralized reviewer database 450 to review the inventiondisclosure to make decisions as to whether the invention described inthe invention disclosure is of patentable significance and/or meets abusiness goal of the business organization. The invention disclosurerouting engine 435 uses the categories and their rankings to selectreviewers from the reviewer database 450 whose expertise profiles 455indicate that they have expertise in the particular categoriesassociated with the invention disclosure. The resulting list ofreviewers may then be ranked based on their relative level of expertiseand the ranking of the categories associated with the inventiondisclosure. Thus, reviewers that have expertise in the highest rankedcategory associated with the invention disclosure may appear first inthe list in order of level of expertise, while reviewers with expertisein lower ranked categories may appear further down in the list ofreviewers. Alternatively, a more complex method of ranking may involvelooking at the various combinations of categories in which a reviewerhas expertise and determining how many categories associated with theinvention disclosure that the reviewer has expertise in along with thelevel of expertise and the ranking of the categories. Any rankingmechanism may be used that takes into account the expertise of thereviewers and the categories selected for association with the inventiondisclosure without departing from the spirit and scope of the presentinvention.

Once a ranked list of reviewers having expertise in thetechnology/business categories associated with the invention disclosureis generated, a predetermined number of the highest ranked reviewers areselected from the list. Availability and scheduling information 475 forthe selected reviewers is then obtained from the distributed reviewerinformation 470. This information may be distributed across a pluralityof computing systems and may be part of each reviewer's own clientcomputing device, for example. The availability and schedulinginformation 475 may indicate the reviewers time schedule with regard toscheduled business meetings, vacations, other invention disclosurereview meetings, business travel, and the like. Basically, theavailability and scheduling information 475 provides informationregarding when the reviewer will not be able to engage in the review ofthe invention disclosure and when they will be able to. This informationmay be used along with review dates set by the invention disclosuresystem 400 to determine if the selected reviewers will be able toperform the review of the invention disclosure given their currentschedules of availability. Thus, for example, if an organizationindicates that a review meeting for an invention disclosures is to bescheduled within a month of the submission of the invention disclosure,then the invention disclosure routing engine 435 may check theavailability and scheduling information for the reviewers to make surethat they have sufficient available time within the next two months toreview the invention disclosure and schedule the review meeting.

If a reviewer's availability and schedule indicate that they are notable to review the invention disclosure, then a next reviewer from thelist of reviewers is selected and the process is repeated until arequisite number of reviewers is obtained. Of course, this process maybe performed on a review team level such that it is determined whetherthe review team as a whole can review the invention disclosure and, ifnot, a next best review team is selected.

Those reviewers 445 that are selected and whose schedules indicate thatthey are able to perform the review of the invention disclosure are thensent notifications of their assignment to review the inventiondisclosure. These notifications may include links to the inventiondisclosure information stored in the existing invention disclosuredatabase 415. In addition, the notification may include a graphical userinterface through which the reviewer may accept, reject or delegate thereview of the invention disclosure. If the reviewer accepts theinvention disclosure, information about the reviewer and/or review teamis stored in the existing invention disclosure database 415 inassociation with the invention disclosure.

If the reviewer rejects the review of the invention disclosure, theinvention disclosure routing engine 435 selects an alternative reviewerfrom the list of reviewers to assign to review the invention disclosure.If the reviewer delegates the review of the invention disclosure, theidentification of the person to which the review task is delegated ischecked against the reviewer database 450 to determine if the person isan authorized reviewer of invention disclosures. If the person is not anauthorized reviewer, then an alternative reviewer is selected from thelist of reviewers. If the person is an authorized reviewer, then theabove notification process is repeated with the person to which thereview task is delegated.

It is possible in the selection of reviewers/review teams that more thanone reviewer/review team may have the same level of expertise or may beequally preferred to be selected as a reviewer for the inventiondisclosure. In the event that more than one review team and/or reviewerhas the same level of expertise necessary to perform a fair evaluationof the invention disclosure, the mechanism of the present inventionfavors the review team and/or reviewer based on a closeness of thereview team or reviewer to the inventors identified in the inventiondisclosure in terms of organization and/or physical location.

Regardless of the particular routing of the invention disclosure to areview team/reviewer using the present invention, the inventors'organization is provided with credit for submission of the inventiondisclosure and the reviewing team/reviewer is provided with credit forperforming the evaluation of the invention disclosure with regard tointernal company accounting and incentive programs. Internal incentiveprograms for submission of invention disclosures and review of inventiondisclosures are generally known in the art and thus, a detailedexplanation of them is not provided here.

Thus, as described above, the present invention provides a mechanism forcategorization of invention disclosures and routing of inventiondisclosures to reviewers/review teams with the necessary expertise tofairly evaluate the invention disclosures for patentability and abilityto further business objectives. In this way, the business organization'sfailure to act on invention disclosures that are not completelyappreciated as far as patentability and/or business objectives areconcerned, is minimized. Moreover, the business organization'sexpenditures on duplicative invention disclosures and inventiondisclosures that are not in line with the business objectives of theorganization is also minimized.

In addition, since the present invention may be used to select reviewteams and/or individual reviewers, the present invention may be used todynamically create review teams that have the requisite expertise for aparticular invention disclosure, whether those reviewers are part of thesame department in the organization, in the same location, or indistributed departments and locations. The present invention permits theformation and co-existence of two distinct types of review teams: (1)those that are broad in scope, where team members come from differentdisciplines; and (2) those that are focused in a specific area ofbusiness/technology. The present invention increases the visibility ofideas beyond the inventor's immediate physical location and/ororganizational area as these novel concepts are exposed to expertindividuals who know how best to leverage them in other areas ofbusiness. The present invention reduces the incidence of independentlysubmitted disclosures that are alike but not yet in a searchable stateas these would typically be routed to the same review team which is in abetter position to recognize similarities. The present inventionimproves the overall quality of submissions through informed, insightfulevaluations from review teams that have expertise in the particulartechnology areas. In addition, as discussed hereafter, the presentinvention may be used to view the expertise of review teams/reviews withregard to the taxonomy of invention categories so that it can bedetermined where coverage gaps or excesses are present. This may triggerthe formation of a new review team or re-balancing of existing reviewteams.

FIG. 5 is an exemplary diagram of a technological/business categorytaxonomy that may be used to categorize invention disclosures andreviewer expertise in accordance with one exemplary embodiment of thepresent invention. As shown in FIG. 5, the taxonomy is a hierarchicalcategory structure in which categories are set forth at a first level ofthe hierarchy and subcategories are provided at lower levels of thehierarchy. For example, the category“Software/Services/Applications/Solutions” may have subcategories of“Image Processing,” “Human Language Processing,” “Data Compression forImage & Sound,” and the like. Furthermore, the subcategory “ImageProcessing” may have further subcategories, or sub-subcategories, of“Image manipulation; scaling; etc.,” “Image rendering & visualization,”“Image scanning,” and “Image recognition.”

Each category and subcategory has an associated identifier that may beused to identify the category/subcategory. In the depicted example, theidentifier is the “Tech Tag” and is an alphanumeric identifier. In mostinstances the “Tech Tag” is a number such as “600” but in some instancesrelated subcategories may be denoted by tech tags such as “810A.” Othertypes of identifiers may be used without departing from the spirit andscope of the present invention. The identifiers are stored in relationto invention disclosures to thereby identify the categories associatedwith the invention disclosures. In addition, the same taxonomy andcategory identifiers may be used to represent a reviewer's expertise ina particular technology/business area. Thus, the category identifiersmay be stored in a reviewer's expertise profile thereby identifying thereviewer as having knowledge in a particular category oftechnology/business. Alternatively, the reviewers may make use of adifferent taxonomy of technology/business categories as long as amechanism is provided for mapping the taxonomy used to representreviewer expertise with the taxonomy used to represent categories oftechnology/business for classifying invention disclosures.

As mentioned previously above, the present invention permits theinventor or creator of the invention disclosure to select categoriesfrom the depicted taxonomy to be associated with theinventor's/creator's invention disclosure for purposes of routing theinvention to an appropriate review team. Thus, the inventor/creator maybe provided with the taxonomy depicted and permitted to select from thehierarchical display of the taxonomy. Alternatively, selected categoriesmay be presented to the inventor/creator based on an automated selectionmechanism as described above, such that a list of possible categoriesfrom the depicted taxonomy are presented for the inventor/creator tochoose from. Still further, the categorization based on the depictedtaxonomy may be completely automated so that the classification of theinvention disclosure is performed without the inventor/creator selectingany categories for the invention disclosure.

Similarly, a reviewer, manager, or other individual in the organizationmay use the depicted taxonomy to establish an expertise profile for areviewer. Categories from the taxonomy may be selected and theiridentifiers stored in an expertise profile associated with a particularreviewer. In addition, the category identifiers associated withinvention disclosures submitted and reviewed by the reviewer may be usedto automatically update the reviewer's expertise profile by addingcategory identifiers to it, changing the level of expertise associatedwith a category identifier, or the like.

FIG. 6 is an exemplary diagram illustrating a manner by which aninvention disclosure routing mechanism may be used to determine a reviewteam or set of reviewers to which an invention disclosure should berouted in accordance with one exemplary embodiment of the presentinvention. As shown in FIG. 6, the invention disclosure routing engine610 receives categorized invention disclosure information 620 from theinvention disclosure system. This invention disclosure information 620includes an invention disclosure identifier 622, a plurality oftechnology/business category identifiers 624, and priorities 626associated with the category identifiers 624.

In addition, the invention disclosure routing engine 610 retrievesreviewer profiles 630, 640 and 650 from the reviewer database. Eachprofile includes a reviewer identifier 632, 642, 652, identifiers 634,644, 654 of the technology/business categories in which the reviewer hasexpertise, and a level of expertise 636, 646, 656 for eachtechnology/business category. It is assumed for purposes of thisexplanation that each of the reviewer's availability and schedulinginformation indicates that they are available to review the inventiondisclosure 620. It is further assumed that the required number ofreviewers for the review team is two reviewers.

The invention disclosure routing engine 610 looks at the categoryidentifiers 624 associated with the invention disclosure 620 and theircorresponding priorities 626. The invention disclosure routing engine610 then searches the reviewer database to retrieve reviewer profilesthat include one or more of the category identifiers 624. The reviewerprofiles 640-660 are then ranked according to which reviewer profiles630, 640, 650 have expertise categories 634, 644, 654 include more ofthe category identifiers 624, which reviewer profiles 630, 640, 650 havehigher priority category identifiers 624 in their expertise categories634, 644, 654, and the level of expertise with regard to those categoryidentifiers 624 appearing in the expertise categories 634, 644, 654.

In the depicted example, based on this selection process, reviewer 2 andreviewer 3 are selected to be part of the review team 660. Reviewer 3has all three category identifiers 624 in its expertise categories 654and reviewer 2 has two of the three category identifiers 624 in itsexpertise categories 644. Reviewer 2 and reviewer 3 have the same levelof expertise with regard to the highest priority category, i.e. category“646.” While reviewer 2 has a higher level of expertise in the secondhighest priority category, i.e. category “600,” reviewer 3 has a goodlevel of expertise in this category and furthermore, has expertise inthe third highest priority category where reviewer 2 does not.Therefore, reviewer 3 is selected as a better choice than reviewer 2 tobe included in the review team 660. However, since two reviewers arerequired for the review team 660, both reviewer 3 and reviewer 2 areselected for inclusion in the review team 660.

FIG. 7 is an exemplary diagram of a display for determining technologyarea expertise coverage by reviewers in accordance with on exemplaryembodiment of the present invention. As mentioned above, in addition tomaintaining reviewer profiles for each of the reviewers in the reviewerdatabase, the reviewer expertise profiles may be used to determine anamount of reviewer coverage of particular technology/business categoriesin the technology/business category taxonomy. That is, the reviewerprofiles may be used to determine an aggregate level of expertise of thereviewers in the various categories in the taxonomy so that a displayindicating the level of expertise in each category with regard to reviewteams may be generated. FIG. 7 illustrates one possible representationof such a display.

As shown in FIG. 7, the display includes a display 710 of the categoriesin the taxonomy and a corresponding display 720 of the expertisecoverage for the various categories. The display 720 of the expertisecoverage includes identifiers as to the level of coverage, e.g., “high,”“medium,” “low,” and “none.” Various mechanism may be used to highlightthese identifiers so as to bring the attention of the user to certaincategories within the taxonomy. For example, various colors, shadings,highlighting, and the like may be used to accentuate those categoriesthat have a “low” or “none” level of expertise coverage while lesserlevels of accentuation may be provided to categories that have “medium”and “high” levels of expertise coverage. In this way, the areas whereadditional coverage is necessary may be highlighted so that new reviewteams may be established to cover those technology/business areas.

FIG. 8 is an exemplary diagram of the primary operational elements of aninvention disclosure and routing mechanism in accordance with analternative embodiment of the present invention in which measurementmechanisms are provided for measuring the effectiveness of the inventiondisclosure categorization mechanism and the invention disclosure routingmechanism. The primary difference between this embodiment and theprevious embodiments described in regard to FIG. 4 is that monitoringmechanisms are provided for gauging the effectiveness of thecategorization and routing processes of the present invention.

As shown in FIG. 8, in addition to those elements described with regardto FIG. 4, the invention disclosure system 400 includes a categorizationmonitoring system 810 that monitors the selection of categories forinvention disclosures made by invention disclosure categorizer inrelation to the final selections made by the inventor/creator. That is,the monitoring system 810 determines when the invention disclosurecategorizer selects a category as a preferred category for the inventiondisclosure and the inventor/creator of the invention disclosure eitherselects that category or selects a different category that is not aspreferred. This information may be used to determine the effectivenessof the invention disclosure categorizer so that reports of thiseffectiveness may be generated for use by a system administrator. Suchreports may indicate areas where the categorization policies and rulesneed to be modified to achieve higher levels of effectiveness.

Similarly, this alternative embodiment includes a reviewer participationmonitoring system 820 that monitors the routing performed by theinvention disclosure routing engine. The reviewer participationmonitoring system 820 monitors how often a reviewer is selected toreview an invention disclosure and either accepts, rejects, or delegatesthe review task to another reviewer. This information may be used togenerate reports as to whether a particular reviewer should be more orless favored than other reviewers in determining the routing ofinvention disclosures. For example, if a reviewer is often selected toreview invention disclosures but rejects or delegates this review task,then the reviewer may be less favored over other reviewers whendetermining where to route invention disclosures, even though thereviewer may be more highly ranked with regard to his/her expertise.Thus, the information collected by the reviewer participation monitoringsystem 820 may be used to adjust the ranking of reviewers based on theirwillingness to participate in the invention disclosure review process.

Therefore, in addition to the functionality described above with regardto FIG. 4, the alternative embodiment illustrated in FIG. 8 providesmechanisms for monitoring the effectiveness of the invention disclosureand routing system with regard to its categorization and routingfunctions. The information collected by this monitoring of effectivenessmay be used to modify the categorization and routing operationsperformed so that a more effective system is developed.

FIGS. 9 and 10 are flowcharts that illustrate exemplary operations ofone exemplary embodiment of the present invention. It will be understoodthat each block of the flowchart illustrations, and combinations ofblocks in the flowchart illustrations, can be implemented by computerprogram instructions. These computer program instructions may beprovided to a processor or other programmable data processing apparatusto produce a machine, such that the instructions which execute on theprocessor or other programmable data processing apparatus create meansfor implementing the functions specified in the flowchart block orblocks. These computer program instructions may also be stored in acomputer-readable memory or storage medium that can direct a processoror other programmable data processing apparatus to function in aparticular manner, such that the instructions stored in thecomputer-readable memory or storage medium produce an article ofmanufacture including instruction means which implement the functionsspecified in the flowchart block or blocks.

Accordingly, blocks of the flowchart illustrations support combinationsof means for performing the specified functions, combinations of stepsfor performing the specified functions and program instruction means forperforming the specified functions. It will also be understood that eachblock of the flowchart illustrations, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations, can be implemented by special purposehardware-based computer systems which perform the specified functions orsteps, or by combinations of special purpose hardware and computerinstructions.

FIG. 9 is an exemplary flowchart outlining an exemplary operation of thepresent invention when generating an invention disclosure in accordancewith one exemplary embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG.9, the operation starts by receiving an invention disclosure from aninventor/creator client computing device (step 910). The inventiondisclosure is then analyzed to extract invention disclosure metadata(step 920). The invention disclosure metadata is then used to match theinvention disclosure with one or more technology/business categories ina technology/business category taxonomy (step 930). As describedpreviously, this may be done manually by the inventor/creator,semi-automatically or fully automatically using the invention disclosuremetadata and category information maintained for existing inventiondisclosures.

Thereafter, the categories may be presented to the inventor/creator forconfirmation, selection of certain categories to be associated with theinvention disclosure, or the like (step 940). The inventor/creator'sselection of categories from those presented may then be received (step950). In a fully automated embodiment, this step and the previous stepmay be eliminated since it is not necessary to get theinventor/creator's selection of categories. The selection of categoriesmay include all of those presented or specific ones of those presentedto the inventor/creator in step 940. The previous step 940 may involvemerely displaying the taxonomy of categories if the system is completelymanual with regard to category selection.

The selected categories are then stored in association with theinvention disclosure in an existing invention disclosure database (step960). Invention disclosure information along with the selectedcategories for the invention disclosure may then be sent to theinvention disclosure routing engine for use in determining whichreviewers should be assigned to review the invention disclosure (step970). The operation then ends.

FIG. 10 is an exemplary flowchart outlining an exemplary operation ofthe present invention when routing a categorized invention disclosure toa set of reviewers or review team. As shown in FIG. 10, the operationstarts by receiving invention disclosure and category information froman invention disclosure system (step 1010). A list of reviewers/reviewteams having expertise in the categories associated with the inventiondisclosure are then identified from the reviewer database (step 1020).The reviewer profiles for these reviewers are then ranked based on theirdegree of expertise in the various categories and the relative priorityassociated with each category in the categorization of the inventiondisclosure (step 1030).

Thereafter, the availability and schedule information for apredetermined set of the reviewers in the ranked list of reviewers isevaluated to determine if they are able to review the inventiondisclosure (step 1040). A set of reviewers that are highly ranked in thelist of reviewers and that are available to review the inventiondisclosure are then selected (step 1050) and notifications are sent tothe selected reviewers' client computing devices (step 1060).

Responses to the notifications are then received from the reviewers'client computing devices (step 1070). A determination is made as towhether all of the selected reviewers accepted the review task (step1080). If not, for those reviewers that did not accept the review task,alternative reviewers are selected (step 1090). If the rejection of thereview task involved the delegation of the review task to anotherspecified reviewer, the selection of an alternative reviewer may involvedetermining if the specified delegate is an authorized reviewer and isavailable to review the invention disclosure. The operation returns tostep 1060 where a notification is sent out to the selected alternativereviewers and the process is repeated until all of the selectedreviewers accept the review task.

Once all of the reviewers accept the review task, the inventiondisclosures are submitted to the reviewers for their review (step 1095).This may involve sending notifications to the reviewers' clientcomputing devices with links to the invention disclosure entry in theexisting invention disclosure database, for example. Thereafter, theoperation ends.

Thus, the present invention provides a mechanism for the categorizationof invention disclosures into technology/business categories in ataxonomy of categories such that the invention disclosures may be routedto reviewers/review teams having the necessary expertise to fairlyevaluate the invention disclosure. In addition, the present inventionprovides a mechanism for specifying the expertise of the variousreviewers/review teams so that they may be matched with inventiondisclosures that are in line with their expertise. As a result, a moreefficient and accurate evaluation of invention disclosures is obtainedwhen compared to the known organizational and physical location basedmethodologies in use today.

It is important to note that while the present invention has beendescribed in the context of a fully functioning data processing system,those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the processes ofthe present invention are capable of being distributed in the form of acomputer readable medium of instructions and a variety of forms and thatthe present invention applies equally regardless of the particular typeof signal bearing media actually used to carry out the distribution.Examples of computer readable media include recordable-type media, suchas a floppy disk, a hard disk drive, a RAM, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, andtransmission-type media, such as digital and analog communicationslinks, wired or wireless communications links using transmission forms,such as, for example, radio frequency and light wave transmissions. Thecomputer readable media may take the form of coded formats that aredecoded for actual use in a particular data processing system.

The description of the present invention has been presented for purposesof illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive orlimited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications andvariations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art. Theembodiment was chosen and described in order to best explain theprinciples of the invention, the practical application, and to enableothers of ordinary skill in the art to understand the invention forvarious embodiments with various modifications as are suited to theparticular use contemplated.

1. A method, in a data processing system, for routing content to aperson for review and evaluation of the content, comprising: receivingthe content; determining one or more subject matter categories to beassociated with the content based on subject matter within the content;retrieving profiles for one or more people that are authorized to reviewand evaluate content, wherein the profiles include identifiers ofcategories of knowledge of the one or more people, wherein thecategories of knowledge indicate areas of knowledge held by anassociated person; selecting a person, from the one or more people, toreview and evaluate the content based on the one or more subject mattercategories and categories of knowledge of the one or more people; androuting the content to a client computing device associated with theselected person.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the content is anelectronic invention disclosure document identifying one or moreinvention ideas of one or more inventors.
 3. The method of claim 1,further comprising: repeating the selecting and routing steps for eachof a plurality of people, wherein the plurality of people define areview team for reviewing and evaluating the content.
 4. The method ofclaim 3, wherein the selecting and routing steps are repeated until adesignated minimum number of review team people are selected from theone or more people.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein determining one ormore subject matter categories to be associated with the content basedon subject matter within the content includes: receiving user inputidentifying one or more subject matter categories from a taxonomy ofsubject matter categories.
 6. The method of claim 1, wherein determiningone or more subject matter categories to be associated with the contentbased on subject matter within the content includes: analyzing thecontent to generate identifiers of subject matter of the content; andautomatically selecting one or more subject matter categories from ataxonomy of subject matter categories based on the generated identifiersof subject matter.
 7. The method of claim 6, wherein the identifiers ofsubject matter of the content are patterns of keywords extracted fromthe content.
 8. The method of claim 6, wherein automatically selectingone or more subject matter categories from the taxonomy of subjectmatter categories includes: comparing the identifiers of subject matterof the content to different previously analyzed content; determining adegree of matching of the identifiers of subject matter of the contentto the different previously analyzed content; and selecting one or moresubject matter categories from the taxonomy based on subject mattercategories associated with the different previously analyzed content ifthe degree of matching is above a threshold.
 9. The method of claim 1,wherein the one or more subject matter categories are subject mattercategories in an established taxonomy of subject matter categories, andwherein the categories of knowledge are also subject matter categorieswithin the established taxonomy of subject matter categories.
 10. Themethod of claim 1, further comprising: ranking the one or more subjectmatter categories in accordance with a relevance of the subject mattercategories to subject matter in the content.
 11. The method of claim 1,wherein selecting a person, from the one or more people, to review andevaluate the content based on the one or more subject matter categoriesand categories of knowledge of the one or more people further includes:selecting a person from the one or more people based on one or more ofphysical proximity of the one or more people to a creator of the contentand a degree of correspondence between an organization affiliation ofthe one or more people and an organization affiliation of the creator ofthe content.
 12. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more subjectmatter categories are selected from an established taxonomy of subjectmatter categories, and wherein the subject matter categories in theestablished taxonomy of subject matter categories represent technologyareas.
 13. The method of claim 6, further comprising: generating ametadata file storing the identifiers of subject matter of the content,wherein automatically selecting one or more subject matter categoriesfrom a taxonomy of subject matter categories is performed based on themetadata file.
 14. The method of claim 1, wherein each profile in theprofiles for one or more people further includes an identifier of alevel of expertise for each identified category of knowledge in theprofile, and wherein selecting a person from the one or more people isfurther based on the identifiers of a level of expertise for eachidentified category of knowledge in the profiles.
 15. The method ofclaim 14, wherein the identifier of a level of expertise for eachidentified category of knowledge in the profile is dynamically updatedas an associated person reviews and evaluates content or submits contentfor review and evaluation.
 16. The method of claim 1, wherein selectinga person, from the one or more people, to review and evaluate thecontent based on the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people includes: selecting aplurality of people from the one or more people based on acorrespondence between the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people; ranking each personin the selected plurality of people relative to the other people in theselected plurality of people based on a correspondence between thecategories of knowledge in the person's profile and the one or moresubject matter categories, to thereby generate a ranked list ofpotential reviewers of the content; and selecting a person from theranked list of potential reviewers of the content.
 17. The method ofclaim 16, wherein selecting a person from the ranked list of potentialreviewers of the content includes: retrieving schedule information forone or more of the potential reviewers in the ranked list of reviewers;determining if the schedule information for the one or more potentialreviewers indicates that the one or more reviewers will be available toreview the content; and selecting a person from the one or morepotential reviewers if the schedule information indicates that theperson will be available to review the content.
 18. A system for routingcontent to a person for review and evaluation of the content,comprising: means for receiving the content; means for determining oneor more subject matter categories to be associated with the contentbased on subject matter within the content; means for retrievingprofiles for one or more people that are authorized to review andevaluate content, wherein the profiles include identifiers of categoriesof knowledge of the one or more people, wherein the categories ofknowledge indicate areas of knowledge held by an associated person;means for selecting a person, from the one or more people, to review andevaluate the content based on the one or more subject matter categoriesand categories of knowledge of the one or more people; and means forrouting the content to a client computing device associated with theselected person.
 19. The system of claim 18, wherein the content is anelectronic invention disclosure document identifying one or moreinvention ideas of one or more inventors.
 20. The system of claim 18,further comprising: means for repeating the selecting and routing foreach of a plurality of people, wherein the plurality of people define areview team for reviewing and evaluating the content.
 21. The system ofclaim 20, wherein the means for repeating the selecting and routingrepeats the selecting and routing until a designated minimum number ofreview team people are selected from the one or more people.
 22. Thesystem of claim 18, wherein the means for determining one or moresubject matter categories to be associated with the content based onsubject matter within the content includes: means for receiving userinput identifying one or more subject matter categories from a taxonomyof subject matter categories.
 23. The system of claim 18, wherein themeans for determining one or more subject matter categories to beassociated with the content based on subject matter within the contentincludes: means for analyzing the content to generate identifiers ofsubject matter of the content; and means for automatically selecting oneor more subject matter categories from a taxonomy of subject mattercategories based on the generated identifiers of subject matter.
 24. Thesystem of claim 23, wherein the identifiers of subject matter of thecontent are patterns of keywords extracted from the content.
 25. Thesystem of claim 23, wherein the means for automatically selecting one ormore subject matter categories from the taxonomy of subject mattercategories includes: means for comparing the identifiers of subjectmatter of the content to different previously analyzed content; meansfor determining a degree of matching of the identifiers of subjectmatter of the content to the different previously analyzed content; andmeans for selecting one or more subject matter categories from thetaxonomy based on subject matter categories associated with thedifferent previously analyzed content if the degree of matching is abovea threshold.
 26. The system of claim 18, wherein the one or more subjectmatter categories are subject matter categories in an establishedtaxonomy of subject matter categories, and wherein the categories ofknowledge are also subject matter categories within the establishedtaxonomy of subject matter categories.
 27. The system of claim 18,further comprising: means for ranking the one or more subject mattercategories in accordance with a relevance of the subject mattercategories to subject matter in the content.
 28. The system of claim 18,wherein the means for selecting a person, from the one or more people,to review and evaluate the content based on the one or more subjectmatter categories and categories of knowledge of the one or more peoplefurther includes: means for selecting a person from the one or morepeople based on one or more of physical proximity of the one or morepeople to a creator of the content and a degree of correspondencebetween an organization affiliation of the one or more people and anorganization affiliation of the creator of the content.
 29. The systemof claim 18, wherein the one or more subject matter categories areselected from an established taxonomy of subject matter categories, andwherein the subject matter categories in the established taxonomy ofsubject matter categories represent technology areas.
 30. The system ofclaim 23, further comprising: means for generating a metadata filestoring the identifiers of subject matter of the content, whereinautomatically selecting one or more subject matter categories from ataxonomy of subject matter categories is performed based on the metadatafile.
 31. The system of claim 18, wherein each profile in the profilesfor one or more people further includes an identifier of a level ofexpertise for each identified category of knowledge in the profile, andwherein selecting a person from the one or more people is further basedon the identifiers of a level of expertise for each identified categoryof knowledge in the profiles.
 32. The system of claim 31, wherein theidentifier of a level of expertise for each identified category ofknowledge in the profile is dynamically updated as an associated personreviews and evaluates content or submits content for review andevaluation.
 33. The system of claim 18, wherein the means for selectinga person, from the one or more people, to review and evaluate thecontent based on the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people includes: means forselecting a plurality of people from the one or more people based on acorrespondence between the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people; means for rankingeach person in the selected plurality of people relative to the otherpeople in the selected plurality of people based on a correspondencebetween the categories of knowledge in the person's profile and the oneor more subject matter categories, to thereby generate a ranked list ofpotential reviewers of the content; and means for selecting a personfrom the ranked list of potential reviewers of the content.
 34. Thesystem of claim 33, wherein the means for selecting a person from theranked list of potential reviewers of the content includes: means forretrieving schedule information for one or more of the potentialreviewers in the ranked list of reviewers; means for determining if theschedule information for the one or more potential reviewers indicatesthat the one or more reviewers will be available to review the content;and means for selecting a person from the one or more potentialreviewers if the schedule information indicates that the person will beavailable to review the content.
 35. A computer program product in acomputer readable medium for routing content to a person for review andevaluation of the content, comprising: first instructions for receivingthe content; second instructions for determining one or more subjectmatter categories to be associated with the content based on subjectmatter within the content; third instructions for retrieving profilesfor one or more people that are authorized to review and evaluatecontent, wherein the profiles include identifiers of categories ofknowledge of the one or more people, wherein the categories of knowledgeindicate areas of knowledge held by an associated person; fourthinstructions for selecting a person, from the one or more people, toreview and evaluate the content based on the one or more subject mattercategories and categories of knowledge of the one or more people; andfifth instructions for routing the content to a client computing deviceassociated with the selected person.
 36. The computer program product ofclaim 35, wherein the content is an electronic invention disclosuredocument identifying one or more invention ideas of one or moreinventors.
 37. The computer program product of claim 35, furthercomprising: sixth instructions for repeating the selecting and routingfor each of a plurality of people, wherein the plurality of peopledefine a review team for reviewing and evaluating the content.
 38. Thecomputer program product of claim 37, wherein the sixth instructions forrepeating the selecting and routing repeats the selecting and routinguntil a designated minimum number of review team people are selectedfrom the one or more people.
 39. The computer program product of claim35, wherein the second instructions for determining one or more subjectmatter categories to be associated with the content based on subjectmatter within the content include: instructions for receiving user inputidentifying one or more subject matter categories from a taxonomy ofsubject matter categories.
 40. The computer program product of claim 35,wherein the second instructions for determining one or more subjectmatter categories to be associated with the content based on subjectmatter within the content include: instructions for analyzing thecontent to generate identifiers of subject matter of the content; andinstructions for automatically selecting one or more subject mattercategories from a taxonomy of subject matter categories based on thegenerated identifiers of subject matter.
 41. The computer programproduct of claim 40, wherein the identifiers of subject matter of thecontent are patterns of keywords extracted from the content.
 42. Thecomputer program product of claim 40, wherein the instructions forautomatically selecting one or more subject matter categories from thetaxonomy of subject matter categories include: instructions forcomparing the identifiers of subject matter of the content to differentpreviously analyzed content; instructions for determining a degree ofmatching of the identifiers of subject matter of the content to thedifferent previously analyzed content; and instructions for selectingone or more subject matter categories from the taxonomy based on subjectmatter categories associated with the different previously analyzedcontent if the degree of matching is above a threshold.
 43. The computerprogram product of claim 35, wherein the one or more subject mattercategories are subject matter categories in an established taxonomy ofsubject matter categories, and wherein the categories of knowledge arealso subject matter categories within the established taxonomy ofsubject matter categories.
 44. The computer program product of claim 35,further comprising: sixth instructions for ranking the one or moresubject matter categories in accordance with a relevance of the subjectmatter categories to subject matter in the content.
 45. The computerprogram product of claim 35, wherein the fourth instructions forselecting a person, from the one or more people, to review and evaluatethe content based on the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people further include:instructions for selecting a person from the one or more people based onone or more of physical proximity of the one or more people to a creatorof the content and a degree of correspondence between an organizationaffiliation of the one or more people and an organization affiliation ofthe creator of the content.
 46. The computer program product of claim35, wherein the one or more subject matter categories are selected froman established taxonomy of subject matter categories, and wherein thesubject matter categories in the established taxonomy of subject mattercategories represent technology areas.
 47. The computer program productof claim 40, further comprising: instructions for generating a metadatafile storing the identifiers of subject matter of the content, whereinautomatically selecting one or more subject matter categories from ataxonomy of subject matter categories is performed based on the metadatafile.
 48. The computer program product of claim 35, wherein each profilein the profiles for one or more people further includes an identifier ofa level of expertise for each identified category of knowledge in theprofile, and wherein the instructions selecting a person from the one ormore people is further based on the identifiers of a level of expertisefor each identified category of knowledge in the profiles.
 49. Thecomputer program product of claim 48, wherein the identifier of a levelof expertise for each identified category of knowledge in the profile isdynamically updated as an associated person reviews and evaluatescontent or submits content for review and evaluation.
 50. The computerprogram product of claim 35, wherein the fourth instructions forselecting a person, from the one or more people, to review and evaluatethe content based on the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people include: instructionsfor selecting a plurality of people from the one or more people based ona correspondence between the one or more subject matter categories andcategories of knowledge of the one or more people; instructions forranking each person in the selected plurality of people relative to theother people in the selected plurality of people based on acorrespondence between the categories of knowledge in the person'sprofile and the one or more subject matter categories, to therebygenerate a ranked list of potential reviewers of the content; andinstructions for selecting a person from the ranked list of potentialreviewers of the content.
 51. The computer program product of claim 50,wherein the instructions for selecting a person from the ranked list ofpotential reviewers of the content include: instructions for retrievingschedule information for one or more of the potential reviewers in theranked list of reviewers; instructions for determining if the scheduleinformation for the one or more potential reviewers indicates that theone or more reviewers will be available to review the content; andinstructions for selecting a person from the one or more potentialreviewers if the schedule information indicates that the person will beavailable to review the content.
 52. A method, in a data processingsystem, for routing content to a person for review and evaluation of thecontent, comprising: receiving the content; determining one or moresubject matter categories to be associated with the content based onsubject matter within the content, wherein determining one or moresubject matter categories to be associated with the content based onsubject matter within the content includes: analyzing the content togenerate identifiers of subject matter of the content; generating ametadata file for storing the identifiers of subject matter of thecontent, and selecting one or more subject matter categories from ataxonomy of subject matter categories, wherein selecting one or moresubject matter categories from a taxonomy of subject matter categoriesis performed based on the metadata file; retrieving profiles for one ormore people that are authorized to review and evaluate content, whereinthe profiles include identifiers of categories of knowledge of the oneor more people, wherein the categories of knowledge are also subjectmatter categories within the taxonomy of subject matter categories andindicate areas of knowledge held by an associated person; selecting aperson, from the one or more people, to review and evaluate the contentbased on the one or more subject matter categories and categories ofknowledge of the one or more people, wherein selecting a person, fromthe one or more people, to review and evaluate the content based on theone or more subject matter categories and categories of knowledge of theone or more people includes: selecting a plurality of people from theone or more people based on a correspondence between the one or moresubject matter categories and categories of knowledge of the one or morepeople; ranking each person in the selected plurality of people relativeto other people in the selected plurality of people based on acorrespondence between the categories of knowledge in the person'sprofile and the one or more subject matter categories, to therebygenerate a ranked list of potential reviewers of the content; andselecting a person from the ranked list of potential reviewers of thecontent; and routing the content to a client computing device associatedwith the selected person.
 53. The method of claim 52, wherein theidentifiers of categories of knowledge included in the profiles compriseidentifiers of a level of expertise for each category of knowledgeincluded in the profiles.